In Italy, an ‘Occupation’ of Parliament Amid Political Gridlock

By RACHEL DONADIO

April 9, 2013

ROME — Just when Italians thought their politics could not get any stranger, on Tuesday they did. That was when members of the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo decided to “occupy” Parliament, a step that would seem unnecessary since voters had already sent them there to occupy 163 of its 945 seats.

The stunt by Mr. Grillo’s followers, who, despite their electoral success, seem intent on acting as a protest movement, was the latest twist in Italy’s continuing political tragicomedy. The members of Parliament from the Five Star Movement called for the occupation to demand permanent parliamentary committees, even though no party has yet produced a governing majority.

For the moment, Italy’s parties remain entrenched in a surreal stalemate — three intractable blocs produced by February’s national election — and as a result, on April 18, Parliament is expected to begin debate to elect a new president of the republic, even before a government is formed.

“It’s a terrible, really terrible mess,” said Stefano Folli, a political columnist for the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore. “Now, we’re really at the worst point because there are three blocs that can’t find an agreement. The logical thing would be for two blocs to ally, but instead that’s not happening.”

More than six weeks after national elections in February, none of the leading parties hold a commanding share of Parliament and all are gripped by irreconcilable differences.

The center-left Democratic Party, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, a somewhat gloomy former economic development minister, won the most seats and has a majority in the Lower House, but not in the Senate. The center-right People of Liberty party, led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, wields veto power.

And the Five Star Movement, which won a quarter of the popular vote, says it wants to destroy the existing political structure and has refused to form alliances with the two main parties, which it blames for having pushed Italy into financial disarray.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bersani and Mr. Berlusconi met for an hour for the first time since the elections, but failed to break the political impasse.

Mr. Bersani has rebuffed Mr. Berlusconi’s requests to form a grand coalition led by an outsider, saying that Mr. Berlusconi, his party’s sworn enemy, is not a reliable interlocutor.

Mr. Berlusconi was replaced by Mario Monti in November 2011 during an acute phase of Europe’s debt crisis and given up for dead, but drew on a groundswell of residual popular support to place second in elections in February by promising to eliminate an unpopular property tax.

“He governed badly for many years, but still managed to maintain a certain degree of consensus,” Mr. Folli said. The left, he added, “wasn’t able to transform itself and renew itself so as to take the reins of government. It fought against Berlusconi, but couldn’t form an alternative.”

Mr. Berlusconi has said he would support a government led by Mr. Bersani only if his party gets to choose the president of the republic.

The pressure is rising because the seven-year term of Italy’s 87-year-old president, Giorgio Napolitano, ends in May, and his replacement must be elected with a two-thirds majority of the same divided Parliament.

Italy’s Constitution forbids a president to dissolve Parliament and call new elections in the final six months of his term.

The presidency has traditionally been a largely symbolic office, but Mr. Napolitano has become a bulwark against political instability. Last month, he named a committee of 10 politicians, experts and technocrats and asked it to produce a list of issues on which the squabbling parties could find consensus. They are expected to issue their findings this week.

Amid the chaos, selecting a viable presidential candidate is a challenge. “This president should be elected with an accord between the Democratic Party and the center right because they are the two formations that represent the great majority of the country,” Mr. Folli said. “But this person should also represent novelty,” he added, and should “speak to the 25 percent of Italians who voted for Grillo.”

Some of the names being mentioned are Emma Bonino, a former Radical Party leader and former European commissioner, who some public opinion polls have placed first, and two ministers in Mr. Monti’s current caretaker government: Justice Minister Paola Severino and Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri. Political analysts say that electing Italy’s first female president would help guarantee stability and also represent a change.

On Tuesday, some of the Five Star Movement lawmakers “occupied” the Senate, meaning they remained in their seats after the day’s session. The group said they would stay until midnight to protest a decision by the presidents of the Lower House and Senate not to form permanent committees until Parliament forms a government.

They passed the time by reading aloud from a legal code.

Mr. Grillo, who does not serve in Parliament but runs the Five Star Movement with what critics say is an autocratic hand, accused the two parliamentary leaders of having carried out “a coup” by blocking the creation of committees.

Last week, the Five Star Movement drew attention when its legislators piled into buses to an undisclosed location for a secret meeting with Mr. Grillo. The buses took three different routes to the site, a hotel in the countryside outside Rome, in order to throw journalists off the trail.

Mr. Bersani has so far failed in his efforts to try to persuade some of the Five Star lawmakers, all of them first-time politicians, to support a center-left coalition. But as time passes, the movement appears to be splintering and may not vote as a bloc.